God’s Delight
I Samuel 15″21, “But the people took some of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the choicest of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the LORD your God at Gilgal.” 22 Samuel said, “Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices As in obeying the voice of the LORD ? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams. 23 “For rebellion is as the sin of divination, And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king.”
Saul was sent by God to utterly destroy the Amalekites. God knew that the Amalekites could cause a wedge between Him and His people because they did not worship Him, and they had fought against His people when they came from Egypt by the deliverance of God.
However, Saul, whom God had placed as king over His people, did not obey; he had allowed some of the nicer things of the Amalekites to come into the camp of Israel. The reasoning that he gave as to why he had done this might have made sense from a human viewpoint, but the human viewpoint is never an excuse to disobey God. There are times when what God says does not make much sense to our minds.
I think about the story in Luke 9 where the man came to Jesus and said Lord I will follow You, but first let me go and bury my father. That seems like a very reasonable request. Isn’t one of the Ten Commandments to honor your mother and father?
Yes it is, but the first and the greatest commandment is to love the love with all your heart, mind and soul; and when the will to follow the human desires conflicts with the command to follow God we must always obey the command of God.
Obedience of heart to the word of God is the mark that God is looking for in our lives. I do not believe that God was very interested in the fact that a few sheep or people of the Amalekites were spared, but He was concerned about the fact that Saul had not obeyed His command because that signaled a rebellious heart.
God is more worried about the willingness that we have to fo follow Him than He is about us “going through the motions” to worship Him. God does want and desires our worship, but only if that worship comes from the heart. Our obedience to God signifies’ to Him that our worship is true, and if it is not true and heartfelt then we are no better than the hypocrites Jesus condemned in Matthew 6!
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Father, I thank You for allowing me to worship You, and I ask that You would help me to keep my heart pure through obedience to Your word so that I may yo worship in spirit and in truth. In Jesus’ name, Amen
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Yes, You Can Ministry 
